Posted on 02/14/2012 6:47:22 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Consider this a corroboration of Gallup and Pew, both of which have recorded a surge for Rick Santorum that makes him the national frontrunner — if not in each state. The CBS/New York Times poll shows Santorum gaining 14 points in a single month, eclipsing Mitt Romney by three points (still within the MOE), whose support stayed virtually unchanged from January. Almost all of the gain comes at the expense of Newt Gingrich, who dropped to fourth place behind Ron Paul among Republican primary voters:
Rick Santorum has pulled slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in Republican primary voters’ preference for the presidential nomination, a national CBS News/New York Times Poll shows.
Ron Paul is now in third, followed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Among self-described conservative voters, the shift has been fairly dramatic. A month ago in this poll series, conservatives were equally split between Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum at 25/25/24 respectively. Now, however, Santorum’s support in this demo has risen to 38%, while Romney has remained steady at 24% and Gingrich dropped by about half to 12%. The same thing has happened to Tea Party support and evangelicals. The dynamic seems to be a movement away from Gingrich and a consolidation among conservative voters behind Santorum as the alternative to Romney, at least for now.
There are a few things to note about this poll, however. This is a poll of registered voters, not likely voters, which is not as predictive a model and is a curious sampling choice in the middle of the actual primary voting. These results come from a larger survey, most of whose results will be announced later. The overall sample was 1,064 registered voters, but only 331 of those planned to vote in a Republican primary. At least a few of those will be independents rather than Republicans, so the partisan split of the overall survey is likely to be highly skewed to Democrats. That doesn’t matter for these results, but a sample of 331 registered voters for a national poll is on the small side. Keep that in mind.
Now that Santorum has become a legitimate force in the race, he’s getting some attention from the usual suspects. Member of Occupy Tacoma tried to crash a Santorum event, and Politico reports that Santorum responded by calling them agents of “true intolerance”:
Filling the front row at the Washington State History Museum where Santorum spoke, a group of Occupy protesters disrupted the event, forcing Santorum to engage them. Occupy Tacoma, the local branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, is camped out right next to the museum, and advertised Santorum’s visit on its web site.
“I think it’s really important for you to understand what this radical element represents, because what they represent is true intolerance,” Santorum said, after two protesters were taken to the ground and placed in handcuffs by police.
The protesters, Santorum suggested, “instead of standing here unemployed, yelling at somebody” should instead “go out and get a job.”
Santorum’s supporters roared their approval, chanting “get a job” back at the Occupiers.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then …
That was a great performance with Gregory! He was polite and kind to those stupid gotcha questions, but he mocked them with laughter. It was perfect.
I'm quite sure that it is not Rick Santorum's goal to 'impress the teachings of his church on the rest of us.'
I'm not sure where or when your earlier quote is from, but I've heard no talk of a church-imposed theocracy from Santorum, and think it's a bit bizarre to believe that's what he'd really try to do.
What I find interesting about the CBS poll is that Santorum picked up points from Paul too.
I think a lot of Republicans were expressing support for Ron Paul in polling because of his “put the federal government back in its constitutional box” attitude.
Romney wasn’t going to do it, and so until it became clear who was going to prevail amongst Cain, Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum, those people just said “Ron Paul” when asked who they supported.
Now that it’s becoming clear that Santorum is likely to be the last man standing amongst the above four candidates, those same voters are dropping their placeholder, Paul, and expressing their support for Santorum. If Gingrich or Perry were in Santorum’s position now, they’d be getting that support instead, but they aren’t.
Personally, I’m glad Santorum stayed in it. Gingrich is far more likely to implode at any moment than Santorum is. And the fact that Santorum has much higher favorables than Gingrich is a huge plus.
Besides, Gingrich’s “big ideas” could very well lead to “big spending” in a lot of areas that we can’t afford. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that he thought cap and trade was a good enough big idea that it was worth throwing in with Pelosi to push it along.
chimera wrote:
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As Rush has (accurately) said, mid-term elections are ALWAYS a referendum on the incumbent. It really doesn’t matter who the opponent is. So if the country is as angry at Obama as it was a year ago, Rick should have no trouble winning.
We have to be careful for what we wish for on this one. The polls I’ve seen show Obumwad with a 70+% personal approval rating, and just over 50% job approval. He does less well on the economic issues but what I find crazy is that as a party the ‘Rats come our ahead of the ‘Pubs in polls where the question is “trust to manage the economy”. That is pretty remarkable and a strong indictment of the lack of intelligence of the average voter that a so-called President and party that has caused so much harm to the country would pull those kind of ratings. And he hasn’t really started campaigning yet, at least not in his typical style. He’ll be sitting on a huge mountain of illegally-raised cash for the campaign that he really hasn’t tapped yet. This is going to be a tough battle, more so than most people on FR seem to think. Whoever the nominee is on our side, they’re going to have to make a strong case for themselves, not just count on an anti-Obama landslide, because right now it doesn’t look like that is shaping up.
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Points taken, but on the flip side Obama is going to have to come up with something better than “my policies may not be working out quite the way I planned, but things would be FAR WORSE if we go back to the failed policies that got us here” if he thinks he has any chance of being re-elected.
Actually, Newt comes off more as smarther-than-thou rather than holier-than-thou, which Santorum comes across as.
You've probably researched this more than I.
I always assumed those posts were from mittbots for a couple of reasons. The notion all Ricks support would migrate to Newt is very flawed, not only would mitt get a good portion of Ricks followers, he would only have one target to take out.
I’m not saying this should count against him, but c’mon...get real here. Newt is “holier-than-thou” personified.
Newt is "smarter-than-thou" personified. Santorum has got the corner on "holier-than-thou".
http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/01/12/you-mean-rick-santorum-is-not-a-libertarian-burn-him-at-the-stake/
http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/01/12/you-mean-rick-santorum-is-not-a-libertarian-burn-him-at-the-stake/
I vote on Super Tuesday for the candidate with the best chance of denying Mitt Romney Ohio’s delegates.
Breathtaking stupidity. But if the party needs a total disaster to finally liberate itself from the ideas that Santorum represents I am prepared to accept the consequences.
Santorum's surge began when he took Mitt Romney apart limb by limb in the final Florida debate. Everyone with half an ounce of neutrality acknowledges that Santorum won that debate.
So, Santorum is a better debater than Romney, he has far less baggage than Romney, he is a real conservative with a lifetime 80 rating from ACU, he is the best pro-life candidate from the beginning of this primary season, and he has a streak of Reagan in that he wants the free market to work for the working, middle class.
He is not as good a debater as Gingrich is when Gingrich is on his game. That's a given. Very few are....maybe Cheney. Gingrich is on his game about every other debate.
So, I could easily support either a Newt/Rick or Rick/Newt ticket.
But, the Real Clear Politics average of the last 4 or 5 polls has Santorum in the lead. It is what it is.
Beat me by a few minutes. Good point, which is easy for me to say since I said the same thing.
Women vote most often on looks. Have for decades.
Perry, Cain, Gingrich......
The list of the Fallen Ones.
I supported Perry before his fall.
I never did get behind Cain. During the Cain surge, I slowly drifted over to Newt.
During the Newt surge, I was feeling great, like we couldn't lose and that we had a great candidate.
Now I'm left with Santorum (recognizing that Newt's fall, like Perry's, is all his own fault, and nothing can be done about it).
I like Santorum well enough but am not excited about him.
I tend to see Santorum as a slightly better looking, somewhat more intelligent version of Mike Huckabee. That's better than Romney, of course. Way, way better. And better than Obama, of course, way, way, way, way better.
But I wish we could look forward to a President Gingrich. Or a President Perry. We can't. I know. So I'll definitely vote for a President Santorum.
Bingo!
It seems like nowadays all one has to do is be just a social conservative to be popular. Fiscal conservatism is dying a slow death and nobody seems to care.
Santorum is a pro-life liberal.
Rick is no whack job. If you've been listening to the debates, he may not have a zing line every other breath like Newt, but he has consistently stayed on message and hammered Obama while the others have been making bloody chunks of each other. He has been the most steady and cogent critic of the POTUS's policies and their effect on the workforce and economy. When he gets a direct question on social stuff, he answers it and swings right back on message. Something else, I trust Rick more than anybody in the race with the Second Amendment. That's just a gut feeling so don't ask me to quantify it.
I will have no problem voting for him if he is the GOP candidate.
But, something is bothering me about the timing of the sudden announcement from the HHS secretary re: the mandate for religious institutions to cover contraception, etc.
Every pundit seems to agree that it was a stupid fight for Obama to pick at this time.
The consensus is that the Catholic vote went for Obama in 2008, and pissing them off now makes zero political sense.
But, this "surprise" mandate seems to coincide with the rise of Santorum.
I think that the Obama team wants Santorum as the GOP candidate. And I think that they used the HHS announcement as a way to help Rick's chances.
Or, maybe they just don't want Newt.
In which case helping out Santorum is an effective strategy.
Either way, I think the announcement by the HHS secretary was not at all about appeasing the liberal base.
It was about getting the opponent they prefer.
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